A shipping service, owned and operated by the local community, is set to be launched next year in Tonga's far northern Niua island group.

Transcript

A shipping service, owned and operated by the local community, is set to be launched next year in Tonga's far northern Niua island group.

The idea of academic and politician, Dr Sitiveni Halapua, it aims to provide shipping in the remote islands without a reliance on the national government or aid donors.

Dr Halapua, who was an MP in the previous parliament and did not stand in the poll last month, told Don Wiseman about the scheme.

DR SITIVENI HALAPUA: We're doing a project starting with the most isolated islands in Tonga which are closer to Samoa than to the other main islands of Tonga called the Niuas. I'm using this idea that what they need there is transport that is community owned and sustainable over time. Right now the boat that serves these islands are owned by the government or rather foreign aid funded 100% and run by the government and also subsidised very heavily in order to provide service to these islands. Unfortunately the service is so infrequent that the people still find it very difficult to live in these islands and have migrated. So what I have done during the past five years is to work with an American boat designer to design a boat that is more appropriate for the needs of the country, more sustainable in using the wind with minimum engine, an inboard engine. My idea is to have some kind of a community democracy where the community are mainly responsible for the development and access to their own well-being rather than being entirely dependent on the government and foreign aid.

DON WISEMAN: But something that clearly is going to rely on them having significant resources and talents and skills.

SH: Yes. To get the project going it needs that. More importantly you design the whole project to utilise resources that are there and to set up a structure and organisation that would enable the people to manage and run it and to ensure that it is sustainable over time. I think the difference between this approach and the current one is normally the current approach in Tonga, as in many other countries, is either funded by the government or the foreign aid donors or alternatively to encourage some private sectors to invest money on it rather than looking at the communities and thinking ways to engage the community in a more meaningful and effective way so that they are able to take care of their own means of livelihood. I really believe in this and I think we have started fairly well. There are challenges on the way. They boat will be completed early next year. It's built here in New Zealand and it's entirely funded by people from those communities who have spread around the world in the Tongan diaspora but they still feel connected to this island so they help and we do all kinds of fund-raising and they are the ones who mainly put money into this project.

DW: Do you know what sort of money you are talking about?

SH: Well for the boat to be complete it would cost about half a million or 500,000. That means boat and equipment and everything is ready to sail between these islands and Tongatapu using the sails, the wind would reduce the fuel consumption by about 80%. The inboard engine is mainly required for leaving and entering these islands. It's small enough, the cargo is fairly small to fit the islands. Let me give an example - the government boat is about 1,500 tonnes but the requirements for these islands on a monthly basis is only about 20 tonnes. You can imagine a 1,500 tonne boat carrying no more than 20 tonnes to these islands, the cost and everything else, whereas you design this boat to just fit that. Just the needs of the islands. I think that will save the government, save the aid donor resources and focus more on what the people in these islands can do for themselves rather than what the government can provide and funded by the foreign aid donors.

DW: Do you just envisage it travelling back and forth between the Niuas and Nuku'alofa or going beyond that?

SH: Not necessarily. I might visit there because right now we have organisations being set up here in Auckland, really using Tongan diaspora too because they have access to resources in more developed countries like Australia and New Zealand, United States, Hawai'i. So they have a small committee in each one of these countries. They are mainly connected and descendants from these islands. There is a committee that will be mainly responsible for the management and running of the project from Tonga and will keep everybody informed and accountable to whatever they put into this and more importantly to work directly with the people in the islands so that they themselves are able to also make contributions to the running and operation of this project. So, I'm basically the brain behind it, have been working on this, but eventually when it's up and running there will be a minimum requirement for my involvement and I would like to do that in, not only other parts of Tonga but also of the Pacific. The biggest challenge for any government in the Pacific islands is really transportation between main islands and outer islands. Not the transportation from their main islands to the rest of the world like in Auckland, Sydney and Hawai'i in America.